How to attract and hold user attention? – case study on improving customer online experience
Users’ attention spans are narrowing. People have more things to focus on but often focus on them for short periods of time. In the competitive online environment, users make lasting judgements about websites within seconds of seeing them for the first time. Web design plays a key role in the success and acceptance of a website but especially important for user retention is mobile compatibility. The percentage of mobile traffic has surged over the past decade and the importance of mobile responsiveness is evident. This article is based on the findings of a study that focused on improving the online experience of a case company’s mobile website. The website had an outdated design, poor functionality, and a structure that did not meet the needs of its users.
Detect the pain and gain points of user experience
Important for a good online experience is the ability to understand the extent and diversity of aspects that together constitute the total experience. Equally important is to understand how a company can affect and improve each part. This requires extensive user research to uncover specific demands, patterns, and pain points of service and how to address them. Pain points are especially influential for user experience. They refer to areas of difficulty that prevent users from getting what they need. Pain points can form a barrier to using the service as they cause high levels of frustration. The ability to identify these bottlenecks improves both customer experience and user retention.
Know your audience
Majority of the pain points revealed in the research related to the website’s navigation. Searching for information was difficult and the navigation menu was confusing. Finding information took time and left users frustrated. Although navigation was the main cause of frustration, the root causes for the pain points were diverse. The navigational problems occurred in different contexts and at different stages of the journey and were dependent on the users’ agendas and their reasons for visiting the site. In other words, the underlying causes of these problems differed from one user to another. The example shows that a poor design can result in multiple bad experiences depending on the variations in the users. It is, therefore, important to design for a target audience based on solid knowledge of that audience.
Use complementary research methods
As pain points are highly subjective, qualitative research is a fundamental part of identifying customer pain points. Qualitative research methods are designed to cover what users say, but understanding whether users’ actions match their words is also crucial in decision-making. Important for an effective research process is therefore the ability to combine different sources of data. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data improves evaluation by ensuring the limitations of one type of data are balanced by the strengths of another. It will also ensure that the understanding is improved by integrating different ways of knowing.
Important for designing functional websites is also the ability to combine techno-centric perspectives and human-centered approaches. Web designers are essentially business-focused with an emphasis on technological components in designing (techno-centric). The lack of attention to user inputs often lead to unsuccessful projects where the needs and problems of users are not understood. User experience (UX) design provides the missing input to web design with its strong human-centered approach and emphasis on user emotions, behaviors, habits, motivations, and needs.
Design should be about continuous iteration
While web design is less iterative, UX design is about integrating continuous improvements into the design. This begins early on in the research process as teams are able to take practical, low-cost actions through fast iterations of different concepts. In this way, teams are able to develop their learning much faster than if they were only discussing ideas. It is important to notice that iteration is not about avoiding mistakes. Rather it is an inclusive process where navigation leverages mistakes and leads to better long-term solutions. And even when changes are created through research and user testing to ensure their functionality, monitoring of improvements continues even after the changes have been implemented. This ensures the site is responsive to user needs, now and in the future.
Conclusions
In the rapidly evolving online environment, capturing and maintaining user attention has become a difficult challenge. At the same time, it is one of the best ways a company can achieve competitive advantage. By understanding the pain points of service, identifying the target audiences, utilizing complementary research methods, and adopting an iterative design approach, companies are able to build user-centric websites that can engage and retain users. Continuous iteration and monitoring of improvements are also important for achieving long-term success.
Master’s degree student in Service Design Programme, Kristiina Varis, studied in her thesis the importance of the users’ point of view when improving the commissioner’s website. She utilized different service design methods and tools to find out what kind of aspects must be considered when improving the usefulness of websites. According to Varis, functionality, layout and content are equally important when talking about user-centric design. She presents in her thesis a prototype of an improved mobile phone website in which all the presented aspects have been considered.
Thesis: Varis, K. (2023). Improving the mobile site customer experience : utilizing service design for an improved website design – Theseus.
Picture: Adobe Stock, AdobeStock_407082525.jpeg (by bnenin)